Facebook and Email: Part 1 of 2

For the sake of discussion, I’m going to assume you’ve heard of Facebook. But just so we’re all clear, it’s a “social networking service and website” (to quote Wikipedia) that connects people to their friends, family members, co-workers, etc. for the purposes of sharing information about their daily lives.

But can it really help your email marketing program? Of course! Here are a couple of tactics for using Facebook to enhance your email marketing program – and vice versa. This post is part 1 of 2. More tactics will be posted this time next week.

Email sign-up forms in your business’s page
This is low-hanging fruit. If you have a Facebook page for your business, incorporate a sign-up form for your email marketing program into the page. Some email software providers (ESPs) have a means for users to build the form directly into your page. Otherwise, link to it from your welcome tab.

By doing this, you’ve converted a Facebook fan into an email subscriber and have an additional channel by which to communicate with them.

Make your email messages shareable
You’ve created a fantastic email campaign and want to enable your recipients to share this message on Facebook. (You’ll first need to create content that your recipients will want to share. What’s considered shareworthy will vary from sender to sender, and even recipient to recipient. That’s an entirely separate posting, but here’s a link with concepts for sharing B-to-B content. Some of the ideas could apply to B-to-C as well.)

To be able to share your content or message on Facebook, you need to use the share URL that Facebook has created. By doing this, it will create a preview of your content, which can then be posted to a Facebook profile or sent as a direct message.
The simplest way to give a subscriber the option to share your link is to add this code into your email:

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=URL

Just replace URL with the link you want to share. In the case of an email message, it would be the URL to view your message online. Don’t forget to include a call to action to “share this message”, preferably using a Facebook icon or linked text.

For example here is the link for the blog post of this message arranged so you can share it on Facebook.

Share this post on Facebook

When you create a link such as that, a preview window will open with optional image selections from the page URL provided. There will also be a place for your email recipient to include their thoughts as to why this link is worth viewing. Once they hit the “share” button in that window, the link is posted to their Facebook profile profile, their wall is updated and the URL will appear in the news feed of their friends with your recipients’ endorsement. Your message now has a personal referral to your recipient’s Facebook network!

Showing up in multiple news feeds is when you start to leverage your recipients’ entire friend list. This process has the potential to move virally as people leave comments or share the item with their friends and family – and so on and so on.

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Got another idea (or two) for blending Facebook with your email marketing program? Leave a comment or post to my Facebook wall. Otherwise, stayed tuned next week for a couple more ways Facebook can enhance your email marketing program.

Transactional emails don’t have to be boring

I just noticed last week that Facebook has switched its friend request emails from plain text messages to a full HTML version. The benefits of HTML email over text are numerous and it’s nice to see Facebook offering its users something of value in these messages.

Here’s a “before” snapshot of the friend request notification:

And here’s the “after”:

Facebook could have gone crazy adding features and links to these messages, but thankfully they kept it simple. In the past, the person’s name wasn’t familiar and you weren’t sure you wanted to accept the request to connect, you had to take a few steps to get more information to make a decision. Now, it’s much easier to make a (superficial) decision based upon their photo.

Twitter also recently switched from a text notification of a new follower to an HTML version. Click the images for a full size version of each.

Old – text	New – HTML

I mention these changes because it’s easy to write-off a transactional email and not give any thought to their design. The updates Facebook and Twitter made added a lot of value for the recipients without going overboard adding bells and whistles just because they could. The basic concepts guiding transactional email design apply to all marketing emails.

With the holiday season coming up and folks doing more online shopping, many companies will be sending emails whose only real point is to say, “Here’s written proof of your order. Thanks for shopping.” Take this opportunity to put some thought into your transactional emails and give them a refresh. But when you do, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Does this add value to the consumer? Just because you can add images to HTML emails doesn’t mean you should. And this means including a banner ad. Nobody likes those, other than the guy who designed it. Those will just make the email clunky without adding anything to the user’s experience.
2. Am I over-designing it? Just as you shouldn’t go crazy with adding images, overdoing on fonts isn’t necessary either. Keep the file size small so it’ll load quickly. And keep the coloring easy on the eyes and consistent with your brands.
3. What useful information can I add? Answer this one as if you were the consumer, not as someone trying to sell more products. If your message is confirming a product purchase, try adding a link to a user manual. If you’re sending an email to confirm a dinner reservation, add a link to find directions to the restaurant.

If you think the above doesn’t apply to you because your business doesn’t send transactional emails, think again. These are basic questions that really apply to all marketing emails. I hope you’ll go forth and give a thoughtful approach to your email designs – transactional and otherwise.

Per-plaxo-ing

I dug through my gmail inbox and found an exchange I had with a friend in 2005 about using Plaxo as a CMS. At the time I was not able to give this friend a good recommendation for Plaxo based upon the comments of another friend. Our conversation died at that point and and so did the attention I paid to Plaxo.

Over the years since that email exchange I’ve would receive messages from a couple of people I knew asking me to update my contact information, but the messages I’ve received lately from Plaxo have picked up and have changed in nature.

A few weeks ago I got a spate of invites to connect to people who had me in their address book. Instead of something that looked like a business card that I was supposed to complete with my info, these people had profiles and were noting how they knew me (friend, business contact or networking). My participation has thus far been passive. I created a user name and password to accept these invites, but I haven’t actively sought out connections by uploading my contacts or anything like that.

Since receiving these recent invites to connect, I’ve been noodling some thoughts about Plaxo. As a LinkedIn user since 2004, and a recent Crackbook addict, I’ve been trying to figure out how this Plaxo site fits into my life.

Do I really need another profile and way for tracking contacts? At this point, I tend to think not. I threw out a question similar to this in Twitter and didn’t get a response. But that’s only read by about 15 folks or so since most of my offline peeps don’t Tweet. Not enough to say this is mass agreement.

Since I am registered on Plaxo, I got the email pictured above. It caught my attention because I am a Moto Q user (mentioned briefly here), which uses a Windows Mobile platform, and this was one of the few marketing emails (i.e. not sent from a personal contact) that actually rendered in a readable format in the windows browser. I usually have to wait until I can read my gmail on the web to decipher those messages since most folks don’t think to go easy on the graphics and links. (That rant continues here.)

Back to my point about Plaxo. I first read the message above on my phone. There was a link to try the service and I clicked it. And I got a screen that is shown at left. In case you can’t read it – and I’d be shocked if you could – it says:

Error
This file cannot be viewed on this device

I felt silly after reading the above and thinking that I was supposed to download something to my phone. Why would a note advertising a service for a Windows Mobile device not be viewable on a Windows Mobile device? The not-so-mobile-viewer-friendly web page was a clue I was in the wrong place. But a 1-2-3 how-to do this wouldn’t have been so tough to include in the note.

So far, I feel Plaxo hasn’t done a great job of getting me engaged in their site. Here are my problems:

• No email to introduce a change in their M.O. from CMS to a robust networking site. If you can see that I’ve registered and done nothing more than passively accept requests, why not a nudge to do more?
  
• What do I gain from participating in their site? I get a colorful (literally and figuratively) profile of contacts on Facebook and an electronic resume of sorts on LinkedIn. That’s all I care to know.

From the time I started writing this post until publishing it I received three invitations to connect to people on Plaxo. In the cluttered world of connecting on the interweb, Plaxo isn’t doing a great job of differentiating its services to me. It’s a generic site in a sea of name brands.

If you’re finding it beneficial in ways that LinkedIn and Facebook aren’t please let me know.

Zappos responds

Turns out I’m not the only one whose feathers have been ruffled by Facebook’s advertising feature, Beacon.  MoveOn.org has created a Facebook group to protest against Beacon’s invasion of privacy.   The Facebook group includes a link to MoveOn’s petition to “respect privacy,” which hit the 20,000 milestone yesterday.   

After I wrote my first post on the topic, a Zappos customer service rep contacted me with the email below: 

Hi Sandi,

I read your blog that was posted on Tuesday about your Zappos purchase and the data link to facebook.  I am so sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

This feature with Facebook is brand new and only works when you are logged into Facebook at the same time that you are placing an order on Zappos.com.  We are collecting feedback from customers and may or may not continue with this feature.

There is an opt out feature to disable the data feed from Zappos.com to Facebook.  All you would have to do is login into your Facebook account, click on the privacy link, click the “external websites” link, and then check the “never” radio button for Zappos.com.

Again, I apologize for any inconvenience.  As a token of goodwill, Zappos is issuing a $25.00 off coupon that you may use towards your next purchase at Zappos. Below is your coupon code.

And then the email went on to explain how to use the coupon and ended with their boilerplate, which includes their mantra: “We like to think of ourselves as a service company that happens to sell shoes.”

I wonder how many of these coupons Zappos has issued lately as a result of the Beacon feature.  So far, coupon aside, my experience with Zappos has been great.  The shoes came the next day, they’re exactly what I ordered and look just like they did on the site.  I was already contemplating my next purchase from them before their email arrived, and the discount coupon is a bonus. 

As with other Facebook applications, Beacon should be opt-in, rather than its current opt-out format.  On Cyber Monday, I hope my fellow online shoppers will log out of Facebook before making their next purchase.  

Beacon: A signal of my displeasure

The saga continues…

Instead of adding to my earlier post, I decided this whole Zappos-Facebook word of mouth marketing technique warranted its own post.

I added the link to my blog post as a posted item within my Facebook profile, and a few hours later it appeared as a News Feed item, pushing the information into each of my friends’ personal viewing space. That prompted an old camp friend to send me a blog posting by David Berkowitz about Beacon, Facebook’s new application that allows “users to share information from other websites for distribution to their friends on Facebook.” I got that from the press release, which lists Zappos.com as one of 44 participating in the Beacon launch.

Now I have the answers to all three questions I posed yesterday.

1. What does Zappos or Facebook think there is to gain by sharing my purchase with the masses?
2. What does that icon to the left of my name mean?
3. How the heck did it get there?

A peek at the Beacon application page answers question #2. Here’s an explanation for the application, which is written with marketers in mind:

Stories of a user’s engagement with your site may be displayed in his or her profile and in News Feed. These stories will act as a word-of-mouth promotion for your business and may be seen by friends who are also likely to be interested in your product.

And that answers question #1. Word of mouth marketing is their primary goal. But were my friends really influenced by my purchase decision? Some may have learned of Zappos.com, but I think the benefit to the advertiser was minimal.

Question 3 touches on user privacy issues, which the Beacon page also addresses. The application page mentions the importance of user privacy, but from my experience I think they need to walk the talk. Here’s what the page says (emphasis added by me):

When you send an action to Facebook, the user is immediately alerted of the story you wish to publish and will be alerted again when they sign into Facebook. The user can choose to opt out of the story in either instance, but the user doesn’t need to take any action for the story to be published on Facebook.

Really? Can I? I didn’t find that to be the case.

I find this interesting from a marketer’s perspective, but as a consumer I am troubled.

News flash: I bought shoes!

Last night I was stunned to find out that a shoe purchase I made on Zappos.com turned into a newsfeed item in my Facebook profile.

I discovered this by looking at my profile and my first thought was, “Holy shiitake! How did that get there?” I was horrified and my knee-jerk reaction was to delete it from my mini-feed so that no one could see it when they viewed my profile. But it was too late for that secret. I IM’d with my friend Lauren about my discovery and she said something like, “Oh yeah. I saw that. They’re cute.” So you mean everyone of my friends knows about my shoe purchase?! Sure enough, this was in every friend’s feed:

Anybody who can view my profile (which only people I’ve granted access to can do) could click on through to look at a picture of the shoes I bought. Thankfully my shoe size wasn’t a part of the feed. At least something was considered sacred.

I can’t figure out how my shoe purchase found its way into Facebook. I may have had Facebook open in one tab while making the purchase on Zappos.com in another tab, but that’s too simple of an explanation. To borrow the term Dave Coustan used when I Twittered about this: creepy. At this point, I have more questions than answers:

1. What does Zappos or Facebook think there is to gain by sharing my purchase with the masses?
2. What does that icon to the left of my name mean? (I can’t click on it anymore since I deleted it from my feed.)
3. How the heck did it get there?

I’m not ashamed of my shoe purchase. It just isn’t something I consider newsworthy. I’ve never bought anything from Zappos, but have read great things about them and I thought this would be a good opportunity to give them a try. I’ll be curious as to what kind of feedback I get from either group.

In the meantime, I think my shoes are supposed to arrive today. Then what? Do I upload a photo of them and create a Facebook album to show them off?